Don’t let the title fool you. I’ve loved Fords that may have been better off as scrap metal. But when reviewing my car history in preparation for writing a handful of COAL posts, I was tempted to cherry pick the ones with character – cars that, for better or worse, left an emotional impression. Those are the easy stories to tell. However, the gaps in between the cars that stir our automotive passions are filled with the forgotten workhorses of our daily lives. The mundane, gray wash of my early car history was filled by a pair of perfectly adequate, perfectly forgettable 1984 Fords – a 2-door Tempo and a bouncy Ranger long bed.

The 1984 Ford Tempo in our family was “mom’s” car, and that’s exactly how it felt to drive. It was purposeful. It was reasonable. The interior of the gray car was an equally neutral blue. It’s 4-cylinder engine was powerful enough to move you around, but you never felt like you were being rushed to get anywhere you were going. The totality of a Tempo seemed as if it was meant to inspire approval through indifference…

…Holy smokes, did they just drive that Tempo upside down?!!…

While the cognitive dissonance here is utterly breathtaking, I am an admitted witness to both sides of the 1984 Ford Tempo.

In contrast to my ’64 F100 beater, the Tempo was a luxury ride that I could pry out of my parents’ grip when mom was carpooling to work, or on the weekends when I needed a classy ride to take my girlfriend to the movies. It shot off the line like a performance car when compared to my truck’s wheezy 292 V8. It had a radio! And FM, at that! And electric locks! And, as a 2-door, it was almost sporty looking. It even had a digital clock with a built-in timer, which I used to calculate – within a few seconds – how long it took to get from that girlfriend’s house to our garage if I got nothing but green lights along the way. To this teenager, in 1990, it was modern transportation at its finest.

And then we flip the coin back to the other reality. In far less than 10 years, this Tempo had aged quickly. Running the A/C sapped its meager power significantly. At 80K miles, it required a transmission rebuild (my driving is still taking the blame for this – some 25 years later – if you ask my father). After a 3-hour return trip from college (fully loaded with all my belongings), a mechanic reported that along with a split rear tire and a couple bad shocks, the Tempo had blown a head gasket. And I’m pretty sure there was some CV joint work in there at some point, as well.

But the final chapter for this automotive enigma was more happenstance than design flaw. My summer job as roustabout for a natural gas pipeline company had me driving on more than the occasional gravel road in rural Oklahoma. Most of these miles were eaten up by riding in fleet trucks, but I had overslept and missed my ride to the remote pumping station we were assigned to that day. After our normal, sweaty 8-hr shift, either the washboard roads or a random chunk of gravel knocked the radiator drain plug loose as I drove home. No warning lights came on as the Tempo slowly lost power – only after it topped a hill and refused to go any further did anything on the dash indicate that something was wrong. Thankfully, I was back in civilization and able to call for a tow, but that little Ford was never quite the same.

To its credit, the Tempo survived the ordeal. The sickly metallic rattle it made when starting up, however, was a clear sign that it was time for us to part ways. So it left us the same way it had served its time with us. With little fanfare, and an emotion-free transaction that brought back just enough cash to acquire the next standard issue Ford…

This is not a picture of my 1984 Ford Ranger.

And it’s not for a lack of digging, nor for a lack of pack-rat tendencies. Ticket stubs for every movie I saw in high school? Check. My 8th-grade letter jacket? Check. A participation trophy for YMCA basketball in 1982? Check. A photo of my blue and white 5-speed Ranger long bed? Not a single one.

This truck was so impactful, apparently, that I didn’t even bother to take a photo of it. As a 2nd-year Journalism major at the time, I was burning through film in photojournalism classes, so the opportunity was there for rolls of photos to be taken. That I never trained a lens toward the Ranger probably says as much as needs to be said about our relationship.

(Note: I took an hour break here, thinking I remembered where some old photos from college might be. No such luck. But I did find the floppy disc that I used in 1991 to login to the college network to sign up for classes. So that was nice.)

In fairness – however much it goes against the narrative – this little truck was a blast to drive. It wasn’t fast, even though it had the “big” V6. But with the 5-speed, I could get access to as much of the 115hp as possible without getting myself into much trouble. The truck drove heavy, almost inexplicably so, considering how thin some of the sheet metal seemed. But that Ranger also drove with a happiness that I haven’t experienced in the it’s full-sized cousins. I distinctly remember the joy of taking corners with (relative) speed and bouncing over the many railroad tracks that crisscrossed the tiny college town in which I lived at the time. No other truck I’ve owned has been as much fun to plow through rain-swollen gutters for blocks at a time.

If our time together had been longer, the Ranger might have earned higher stead in my automotive memories. Between my classwork and a soon-to-be-fiancée, I hadn’t found much time to troubleshoot its nagging issue of randomly losing power and refusing to restart. I’d be stranded for 20 or 30 minutes before it would fire up again, sometimes going weeks or months in between recurrences. A quick Google search tells me this might have been a TFI issue, which sounds like its pretty common for the breed. Where were you, Google, when I was sitting with hazards flashing along I-44 outside of Vinita, Oklahoma?*

The Ranger likely had mixed feelings about me, as well. I once put it out of commission after cracking the thermostat housing during a thermostat replacement. My chronic knack for over-tightening bolts had us both sidelined for a week while a new part was on order – though only one of use had to suffer the indignity of riding a single-speed Schwinn to campus in the quickly approaching winter.

The Ranger’s anticlimactic end came the following Spring. A left turn into the side of a Thunderbird closed our relationship with a sickening metallic crunch. Everyone walked away unscathed, but the Ranger would never again roll under its own power.

Life was transitioning quickly as these COALs shared their time with me, which likely accounts for them being shadows more than memories. But, they (mostly) faithfully moved me between school, work, and home, even as I hardly gave them a passing thought. So here’s a final nod of acknowledgement to my two 84s – gone but not forgotten.

49 Comments

Later model Tempos, with the “Vulcan” 3.0 V6 engines, were quite inexpensive, peppy & tolerable…especially when bought barely-used at the 2 or 3 year mark. As with many American small cars, one had to “work the option list” to make it livable.

I considered my 2002 Ranger XLT (base 4cyl, 5 speed manual, Factory A/C) the equal of any of the level Jap trucks…and a LOT cheaper. The dealer gave me a 1K rebate AND 5 year interest free financing, quite unheard of in 2002.

I also have experience with these two vehicles except that the Ranger was an ’88. Unlike you, however, my experiences with these two stand out among others. My oldest daughter bought a 1984 Tempo 4 door, also gray, in 1991 when she was in college. It was the first car she bought for herself after driving a relatively trouble free 1978 Mustang II shared with her sister through high school. It was low mileage and in nice shape. It also turned out to be a piece of crap. What I remember most about it is the blown head gasket and warped head, blown piston on another occasion, her being stranded halfway back to IU on two different weekends, making trips to Bloomington to either fix it or haul it back here for repairs while she used my Ranger and how happy I was when she sold it. My brother was bringing me some parts in Bloomington once when I told him that I was spending all my spare time working on it and it wasn’t even good looking. After she sold it I read in the local paper a couple of months later that an ’84 Tempo burned in the neighborhood the new owner lived in. I always wondered if the fire was accidental.
The Ranger on the other hand gave me 200+K miles of mostly excellent service. It was all of what you experienced with yours and is one of my favorite vehicles. I did have a 5 speed transmission failure at 180K and found out that that was pretty common. I also wrecked it once, rear ending a 1982 Olds 98 which totalled the Olds. I drove the damaged Ranger home and for a month afterwards before taking it to the body shop. The difficulty of changing the clutch was an experience I didn’t want to repeat, but ended up doing on my ’95 Ranger.
Otherwise any problems I had were very minor.
As you can see, these both stand out in my mind.

Well, it bent my driver’s side fender and bumper and broke the grille, but didn’t break the headlight. The rear quarter was smashed in on the tire on the Olds and the trunk lid was bent in the middle. I helped the guy bend out enough sheet metal to get him home a couple of blocks away with minimum tire drag.
After I was done with the Ranger and bought a new ’95 Ranger I gave it to my youngest daughter to drive in high school. She put another 10 K on it in two years when I then sold it to my nephew. It had 226K at that time.
Our middle girl about that time got an ’89 Tempo. I cringed when she told me. However, it was a V6 and gave her good service until it finally was worn out.

Nice. I always liked the look of the two-door Tempo, but not its entirely flat front floor, which gave me no place to lean my gas foot. And I loved reading your report of your Ranger. I’ve always had a thing for those but have never as much as sat in one.

With Chevy (and rumors of Ford) reintroducing smaller trucks, I may find myself back in one some day. I’ve had full-sized trucks as my daily drivers since late 90s, but nothing like bouncing around in a little pickup.

I agree that the two-door Tempo was a reasonably good-looking machine. Unfortunate that neither the peformance, nor the quality, nor the driving experience lived up to the looks..

Those 1st-gen Rangers were tough little trucks. Basic, but honest and tough. Rare nowadays, and they never seem to have developed the same “hot rod truck” following that early S-10s seem to have these days.

Clearly you and cars, in your younger years, were not a match made in heaven. Do cars tremble in your presence?

As for 1984 what year was that again? I have no recollection of any American car from that time frame. All I recall is my mother’s 1982 BMW 320, my ’86 626, my girlfriend’s ’86 626 and then my mother’s ’89 626. Obviously not a good period for me and American cars this coming from a car and Ford nut.

Haha wow… wonder how much Jackie Stewart charged on top of his normal consultation fee in order to get the words “the Ford Tempo is a true driver’s car” out of his mouth? Or maybe this Tempo was equipped with the double top secret unlisted Sports Competition Pkg. option?

Hey, nice post! Funny, I’ve never been any kind of Tempo fan but your picture and that first ad with the silver one make it look (almost) good! I’m glad you didn’t skip over the more mundane cars, they are just as entertaining and informative to read about.
Thanks!

84 Mercury Topaz here. Left me stranded two states away from home. Never trusted for a road trip after that.

I think I should have put my trust in a Ranger instead of a Nissan Hardbody. My 91 S10 with the 4.3/auto was the closest I came and that was after I weaned myself from the Nissan NapsZ head gasket issues. I think a Ranger king cab with Vulcan and stick would have done for me for a long time.

My carpool driver had a gray Tempo – or maybe white, I can’t remember for sure – that she inherited from her parents. Its nickname was Adagio. It met its end by spontaneous ignition when parked in the driveway of one of her kids’ friends.

Any idea what year? Evidently spontaneous combustion was a problem with some late 80’s and early 90’s Fords. My otherwise beautiful ’91 Crown Vic met its untimely end that way, when the alternator decided that it was a good day to catch fire.

Nothing exemplified the Detroit coin-clipping mentality better than the perpetually-undeveloped Falcon Six being used as a basis for an ’80s 4-cyl, just so they could save tooling costs. It amazed me even back then that the Pinto engine was ignored; maybe it couldn’t mount transversely?

That showed me the folly of buying American small cars; the only conceivable excuse for such engineering conservatism is better reliability, which was not the case compared to Japan.

The HSC 2.3 was much more than just a Falcon 6 with two cylinders lopped off, they did significant development to create the new engine. Yes it was done so it could be produced using a few bits of the old Falcon 6 tooling to reduce costs.

The reason for the new engine was that the production lines for the OHC 2.3 were running at full tilt to keep up with the demand for use in the Ranger and Mustang and there just wasn’t the capacity to make another 300K per year. It is a fairly tall and long engine so it may have not fit in the Tempaz.

In fairness, Ford was kinda in shambles when the Tempo was being developed… but like you said, that really is just an excuse. By the mid-80s they were raking in the dough yet the 2.3 HSC hung on until the very end of Tempo production. I’m sure there were some Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets and market research that suggested most potential Tempo buyers couldn’t give a shit, but a smoother, modern four would have made a world of difference in this car.

IMO that was the downfall of most every American small car during the ’80s (and beyond) – they all stopped right at “good enough”. I’ve never been a fan of the Tempo/Topaz, but I’ve softened my opinion of them over the years. The styling was fresh (when they debuted), they were reliable, decently put together and I’m sure they turned enough of a profit having been in production with few changes for over a decade… and they had very few redeeming qualities beyond that. With a little more $$$ and effort, it probably could’ve gone from something that was passable, at best, to a car people actually wanted to own.

I don’t know many customers with that Honda engine weren’t that impressed when I handed the a $600 bill to replace the head gasket or a $1200 bill to put a used engine in on a car with around 100K on the clock. No matter how well you maintained that Honda engine it would need a head gasket replacement or the engine changed by 100K ~120K. They cheaped out and used ancient gasket technology designed for iron heads on iron blocks.

Meanwhile the 2.3 HSC while a little crude and coarse would make it to 200K with minimal care. To blow the head gasket which was a state of the art FelPro “printoseal” you had to loose all the coolant and continue to drive it until the pistons expanded to the point where the engine wouldn’t turn. Stick a head gasket in it and drive on, and thanks to the cam in block design it was a quick and simple repair. I replaced dozens of those 1.8 12 valve Honda engines yet only once did I replace a Tempaz engine despite the fact that there were far more HSCs on the road than that Honda 12 valve.

Sean Cornelis

Posted October 13, 2014 at 11:06 PM

I had a whole bunch of Hondas from that era and I believe the head gasket problems were really limited to the early CVCC engines and resolved within a couple of years. By the time the E-series was a 1.8l in the Accord I’m fairly certain they had worked it out and the later “12-Valve” engine in the Accord/Prelude is an entirely different engine altogether.

Eric VanBuren

Posted October 13, 2014 at 11:55 PM

Well apparently someone forgot to tell all the engines I saw that they didn’t eat head gaskets anymore because I replaced a lot of them. They were better than the CVCC engines though.

Neil

Posted October 14, 2014 at 11:13 AM

There’s more to reliability than head gaskets. Even if Honda dropped the ball on this point, it evidently wasn’t enough to ruin their customer reputation, while Ford had to do a Hail Mary on the Taurus, which BTW, still used a larger HSC as a base engine despite the huge investment in other parts of the car.

Oh, the mighty Tempo. Despite the experiences of those above, my father purchased an ’88 new and got 152,000 almost trouble free miles from it. It was a white two-door with the five-speed.

The only issue he ever had with it was a mechanism in the dash got tangled, so all air blew out the defroster vents. The second issue was the electric fan motor coughed out a few bearings. Other than that, trouble free and unexciting motoring at its best.

My sister had a ’92 Tempo sedan; she totaled it and bought a 5-speed Ranger to replace it. She totaled the Ranger, also. The Ranger was replaced with a ’97 Taurus that she still has and its rolling around Cincinnati with well over 200k on the odometer.

I put 20k relatively trouble-free miles on the ’85 Tempo I bought back in ’93 for a whopping $80.00 The girl that owned it had enough of it’s driveabilty issues and I took a chance with it. Replace maybe 100ft of hardened leaking vacuum lines 🙂 and beat it like a bad monkey 😀 . Only issue it had during my ownership was its dislike for light, fluffy snow. That stuff would blow through the grille, a/c condenser, and radiator and soak the distributor, and it’d just die. Let it sit for 15 minutes of so and it would fire right back up. A buddy and I took it to the ’93 Indy 500, drove up the night before and slept in the damn thing. The stupid stuff we did in our younger years… LOL,. Sold that little turd for $375 after owning if for a bit less than a year.

The forgettable cars are usually just as interesting for us to read about. This reminds me of my first car, which was also a hand-me-down from my mom – the Tempo’s Chevrolet foe – and it was an even bigger disaster/piece of crap. The silver 2-door here actually looks pretty good with those funky wheels, as does the black one in the ad with an even weirder set.

I never gave these Rangers much attention either, but now that they’ve mostly disappeared I’m starting to appreciate their clean look and no-nonsense demeanor. Sounds like it was a fun truck to own.

From what I read back in the ’80s, Ford could not use the “Pinto” 2300 in the Tempo/Topaz because it was too long. To fit in the T/T the car would have had to have been widened 2 inches which Ford did not feel was cost effective.
I rented a Tempo for a few days in 1990 and (barely) remember it as being an unremarkable car. It was medium blue inside and out. I like the 2 doors, too, and probably would have bought one instead of my 89 Civic…if there had been a more sophisticated powertrain available.
I owned a 94 Ranger, a 4 cylinder XLT with a manual transmission. That Ranger stood up to a lot of abuse (delivering pizzas) and as “basic” transportation it’s only failing was low 20s gas mileage. That, and a steering wheel that was a bit too close to a driver’s chest.
I really like Fords but when the company doesn’t make more than a token effort, I take my money elsewhere.

That ranger brings back some AWFUL memories of the ’87 Ranger I drove for just under a year when I was between Jeeps. it looked a LOT like that grey one, except it was a shortbed and was charcoal grey with a silver rocker stripe. COAL on that one after my next two…

I think the Tempo is getting more attention in the past few weeks here then it ever did when you could buy the things! Like a lot of you, I actually kinda dig the style of the coupe. I have a thing for simple, clean 2 doors. But me being the hotrodder I am at heart, I like a car that is a good platform for upgrades. The Tempo…yea not so much.

I will say that I have a bizarre love for those ‘4 leaf clover’ wheels on the car in the first pic. Just a really interesting looking design that draws the eye right in. Being steelies, Im sure a good wheel shop could open those up to 15×7 or so….

I would have guessed those top-pic wheels were aluminum, or one of those weird plastic-metal hybrids, but they are indeed steelies (sorry to have doubted you, MP74). For those nostalgic for extensive option lists, here’s a reminder of what ’84 was like:

Those were the TRX wheels and yes they made it on some Tempos, I saw a few so equipped back in the day. They were not very common since to the buyer of most Tempazes the definition of how a car handled was still measured by how easy it was to park.

It’s funny that you mention that you could have taken photos of your Ranger while burning through rolls of film for your photojournalism class.

You didn’t do it, but I did.

This picture of my ’83 was taken while finishing off a roll (only later did I realize it actually wasted more money snapping useless pictures). From the looks of it, I didn’t learn a lot from that class.

My Ranger was the 2300cc four-cylinder; the motor blew and my dad replaced it with one from a Pinto. It had a very solid body; wish I still had it, but alas, a bad clutch made me sell low.

I really was shocked that I had no pics of the Ranger, and am convinced I just didn’t make prints of them. And yeah, what a waste of money – who knows how many times I had an assignment due and got what I needed within the first 10 or 12 of a roll of 24. And since you’ve gotta develop it all, might as well shoot whatever’s around.

First dealership I worked at had an ’86 Ranger as a parts chaser, a 2.3L with a stick, regular cab. Miserable truck for me and my 6’3″ frame. It was supposedly a lemon law buyback for “lack of power” 😀 . A 2.3 Ranger that “lacked power’? Didn’t they all LOL?!?!?

Being in the parts business we miss Tempos and Topaz’s—we made a lot of money off them. Not that the cars were junk, its just that in all the years they made the things all they ever changed mechanically was carb to FI and added the V6. As long as the car wasn’t one of the very rare models with AWD or diesel–the brakes, suspension and exhaust used the same part numbers for the entire run. I can still remember the Walker numbers for the exhaust pipe and muffler (48263 and 22363) off the top of my head.

My first car was a 1988 1/2 Ford Escort. It was mediocre in almost every metric compared to its competition (My father talked me out of buying a MKII VW Golf). I had the car for 6 years and about 100k. It averaged 30-35mpg, blew 3 batteries, had recalls for the transmission (3 times back to the dealer), a mysterious symptom of the engine cutting out completely at speed (finally found the culprit: a broken tab on an ECU harness/ fixed with a zip-tie). It was utterly generic but perfectly acceptable for a first time car. I traded it for a then new Neon sport that was a blast to drive. But early 1990’s Chrysler products had great styling marred but shoddy QC. The repair history was abysmal culminating in a shattered clutch (the same day I paid the car off).

Back to the story. My best friend had a 1988 Tempo in beige (fitting). The car was perfectly acceptable in every category but not soul inducing. The only thing that happened to his car were blown tie rod ends. Everything worked until the day he sold it.